Trump's America: How long can the system hold?

Washington | In the late summer of 2013, just months before Donald Trump hosted the now infamous Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, a poll in Louisiana threw up a startling and weird result.

It showed the voters of the humid southern state, home to New Orleans, weren't sure whether it was then-president Barack Obama or his predecessor George W Bush at fault for the federal government's "poor" response when the levees broke after Hurricane Katrina.

The devastating storm hit New Orleans in August 2005. That was more than three years before Obama took office, yet nearly one in three Republicans in the state blamed Obama, rather than Bush.

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That such basic facts of record are even vaguely contested is not surprising in America, a country that often feels swamped by fake news, social media manipulation and a deep vein of cynicism.

Fake news is getting worse

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What is surprising is that it continues to get worse.

Watching and reading a lot of what passes for "news" quickly becomes an exercise in astonishment and frustration.

After dark, when the cable TV news channels ramp up the nightly battle for ratings, facts and impartiality play second fiddle to the spectacle of partisan warfare.

They all do it. Some more than others.

CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, pick your poison – a relentless stream of anti-Trump invective, wall-to-wall 24-hour coverage of the smallest incremental detail of the president's countless crimes and shortcomings. Their appetite for such coverage appears insatiable, as it seems is their audience's.

Or opt instead for the prime time Fox Network fawn-a-thon, where the president can do no wrong in his battle against the liberal elites, socialist Democrats, and those traitors over at CNN.

If those big-name outlets aren't spicy enough, you can keep skipping up the dial to channels like the One America News Network, an unapologetic, flag-wrapped right-wing propaganda funnel launched in mid-2013 – the same time as that Louisiana poll – by millionaire Trump supporter Robert Herring.

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San Diego-based OAN carries Trump campaign speeches live, without interruption, unlike Fox and the others, and focuses little of its coverage on the president's sea of woes.

It was the only news organisation to petition the White House in support of its decision to suspend CNN's Jim Acosta's press pass after he clashed with the president the morning after the midterms.

Down the internet's wormhole

Off cable and into the bowels of the internet there's even less pretence.

Every day fresh evidence emerges of how twisted this space has become.

Most assume President Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee in 2020, but some are starting to wonder. ZACH GIBSON

Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest were all weaponised to disrupt the election and the way Americans view their politicians.

The reports showed a Russian-based group called the Internet Research Agency, based in a shabby St Petersburg office block, used social media to target African American, evangelical Christians and pro-gun voters with words, images and videos – all tailored to match specific voter interests – designed to help elect president Trump.

"The 2016 election was the Pearl Harbour of the social media age: a singular act of aggression that ushered in an era of extended conflict," thundered the New York Times this week.

But not all of this aggression comes from nefarious foreign sources.

Defence Secretary Jim Mattis announced he would be leaving in February, adding to a record number of departures of presidential staff. SUSAN WALSH

A Columbia Journalism Review study published in mid-2017 analysed more than 1.25 million stories published online between April 2015 and Election Day in November 2016, and found the emergence of a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart, the beloved alt-right portal once run by Steve Bannon, Trump's short-lived White House chief strategist in the opening days of the presidency.

It "developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world", the CJR researchers wrote.

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Stories such as "IT'S OVER: Hillary's ISIS Email Just Leaked & It's Worse Than Anyone Could Have Imagined" were shared across the network.

"This mix of claims and facts, linked through paranoid logic, characterises much of the most shared content linked to Breitbart," the CJS reported.

"It is a mistake to dismiss these stories as 'fake news'; their power stems from a potential mix of verifiable facts ... familiar repeated falsehoods, paranoid logic, and consistent political orientation within a mutually-reinforcing network of like-minded sites".

Social media targeted

In response to these revelations, many of the big new media companies have rushed to clean up their act by "de-platforming" the most odious individuals and organisations blamed for the blizzard of bulldust that stormed through 2016.

Amid threats of heavy-handed regulation by Congress, companies like Twitter have deleted millions of fake and automated accounts.

In turn, those same platforms are now confronting accusations they are suppressing conservative voices. Those accusations, ironically enough, come from the president, even though he may have been helped by such manipulation.

"Facebook, Twitter and Google are so biased toward the Dems it is ridiculous!," Mr Trump wrote in a recent tweet. David Rowe

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"Facebook, Twitter and Google are so biased toward the Dems it is ridiculous!," Mr Trump wrote in a tweet on Tuesday [Wednesday AEST]. "Twitter, in fact, has made it much more difficult for people to join @realDonaldTrump.

"They have removed many names & greatly slowed the level and speed of increase. They have acknowledged-done NOTHING!"

Kyle Kondik, an analyst of American politics at the University of Virginia, suggests that misinformation is nothing new in US politics, but it is being dialled "up to 11" by a president happy to lie.

The rise of the anti-establishment movement

He points out that Trump is riding the caboose of a decades-old, anti-establishment movement that has built its power by dancing with the darker forces of American life, including racism, anti-semitism and isolationism.

That train includes phenomena such as the John Birch Society, the Goldwater nomination, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party and now Trump.

"Trump is not a Bircher, but his presidency comes from the long-standing Bircher wing of the party," says Kondik.

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"There's been a fight in the Republicans going back to at least the New Deal between the so-called Eastern Establishment against the heartland, for what it's worth."

Facebook and other social networks were all weaponised to disrupt the 2016 election. David Rowe

Many of the former, Kondik says, are now Democrat voters.

"Then you have a president in Trump who has basically taken many of the positions of the Republican Party and sort of amplified them: he's not just anti-immigration, he's virulently anti-immigration. He's not to just anti-media, he's virulently anti-media."

Trump's behaviour has triggered an unprecedented response from the American press, producing a negative, self-reinforcing feedback loop.

"In the mindset of conservatives the press is even more hostile than it has been in the past.

"Trump has benefited from the distaste conservatives have for the press and his own behaviour has amplified it."

Separating fact from fiction

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Little wonder so many Americans are struggling to sort reality from fiction.

A study done just before the November midterms of more than 800 High School seniors – using text polling in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky – found young voters are relying on instinct to get through the morass.

Titled 100 Days in Appalachia, the research collaboration between West Virginia University Red College and West Virginia Public Broadcasting spoke to Amber Ferrell, a teacher in Charleston, who said many of her students appeared not to have a strong grasp of the economic issues that affected their region.

Political positions were often shaped by "a gut reaction, without thinking deeper about them," she said.

"It has been my experience that the majority of students I have would identify as conservatives, but when asked to express their views, more often than not those views are incredibly liberal," Ferrell said. "It would be hard to classify a majority of my students as being liberal or conservative."

One of the students, from a high school in Sophia, West Virginia, said the bellicose rhetoric and combative tone by many public figures deters many from debating political issues.

"Both political parties are so opposite that they create a grey area between them," she told the researchers. "It is hard as an American teen not to get caught up in all the negativity."

Trump under siege

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As 2018 shudders to an end, Trump has become a president besieged.

The six weeks since November midterms have been disastrous and many are starting to question whether he even makes it to the 2020 race.

And then there's his office – having lost no less than 10 cabinet secretaries in his first two years, something of a contemporary record – Trump has seemed unable to attract America's best and brightest to be his chief of staff. The run of resignations continued when Defence Secretary Jim Mattis announced he would be leaving in February. His resignation letter made it clear he could no longer work with a president whose views and positions were so far from his own.

According to a Brookings Institution count, more than 60 per cent of the president's top officials have left in the first two years, an attrition rate greater than the previous five presidents.

Wired Magazine tallied no fewer than 17 distinct court cases stemming from at least seven different sets of prosecutors and investigators. This includes his inauguration committee, and whether countries like Saudi Arabia have something over the president.

That tally doesn't include any congressional inquiries, or inquiries into other administration officials unrelated to Russia.

And what of the way the president conducts himself? A Washington Post running tally puts the number of Trump's false claims since becoming president at 6420, including more than 4400 this year.

And all of this before subpoena-wielding Democrats take charge of the House of Representatives in January. They have left no doubt they plan to make life hell for the president.

"People who follow this presidency on a daily basis have become almost numb to all of the very significant things that are happening," says Kondik.

Looking to 2020

Most people still assume Trump will be the Republican presidential nominee in 2020 and will have a good chance of defeating whoever the Democrats settle on.

But some are starting to wonder.

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"At some point you wind up wondering will he be compelled to resign," Kondik says. "I'm not making a prediction, but you have to at least keep in the back of your mind that possibility."

Rick Wilson, a creator of political attack advertisements for the Republican Party and author of the very entertaining 2018 best-seller Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever warns life after Trump could be even worse.

Rather than a "reset" to the Republican Party of old, the future could decay into a political "Mad Max scenario" where the forces unleashed by Trump intensify.

"Everything about Donald Trump's presidency and character is a disaster for America," writes Wilson – a rare Trump critic willing to openly attack the president and his supporters from the political right.

"The victories Republicans think they have achieved are transitory and ephemeral and come at the cost of their principles and, probably, their immortal souls.

"He is a stain on the party, on conservatism, and on this country that won't easily wash out."

Which is why those praying for an early Trump exit should be wary. He won't go quietly, and while many will cheer, just as many will be outraged.

"I have the greatest base in history – [they] never waver," Trump said this month.

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Trump's approval ratings are pretty much locked at around 40 per cent. But among Republicans, he's in the high 80s to low 90s, and even higher among Republican women.

Whether the coming revelations from the Mueller report, whenever it lands, are significant enough to change public opinion is also open to debate.